[Television] 7 of the weirdest categories at the Star Awards

The Star Awards 2017, Singapore’s version of the Academy Awards, is almost upon us. It’ll be telecast live this Sunday (17 April) on Toggle at 7.30pm, in a move that shows Mediacorp’s growing awareness that most television shows aren’t watched on television anymore.

The Star Awards started in 1994, when Mediacorp was known as SBC (Singapore Broadcasting Corporation). It has since added a lot more awards, like Best Actor and Best Actress. However, there have been some really odd awards in the past 20 odd years. Many of them are sponsored categories, but here are some of the weirdest ones that have popped up.

1. London Choco Roll Happiness Award

We’re not too sure whether “Sugar King” would be a great descriptor for the product, but here are the facts. According to the NTUC website, one serving of a London Choco Roll has 82.7 calories. Out of those 82.7 calories, 33.6 are fat. That would probably make the recipient of the award very happy, like 2016’s winner, Romeo Tan.

Except that he looks like this.

He certainly doesn’t look like he eats London Choco Rolls (or maybe he does, then he goes to London Weight Management) (they’re not the same company, by the way) (and it’s also pretty clear that he goes to Bioskin) so it’s rather strange that he’d win the award.

A more believable recipient would be Moses Lim.

2. BottomSlim Sexiest Legs

While most of the other awards at the Star Awards are about skill and competency, this one is about… genetics. It was last seen in 2015, and Julie Tan clinched the award then. Here’s a picture of her.

It feels wrong just staring at her legs, doesn’t it? In fact, the whole award feels awkward, since it presupposes that a panel of judges were given sets of leg photos in order to determine the winner. It feels like something that MDA would have frowned upon, and yet it managed to run from 2013 to 2015.

3. Tokyo Bust Express Sexy Babe Award

Just to be clear, the award is the Sexy Babe Award, and the sponsor for the award is Tokyo Bust Express. The criterion for being a “sexy babe” should be pretty obvious. But this is another strange award to give out, because you can go for an operation to maximise the criterion needed to be a “sexy babe”.

To put it bluntly, it sounds like an award to see who has the best mammaries.

Thankfully, it was only around in 2015, and it hasn’t been given out since.

4. YES 933 Best Speech Award

This award is presented by the YES 933 radio station which is owned by Mediacorp, which makes you wonder what makes this radio station so special that it can present a television award.

To make it even stranger, it is specially for the best speech at the Star Awards. That means it’s an award that’s given to someone who has already won an award. It’s like rewarding a lottery ticket winner with another winning lottery ticket. It feels like someone ran out of ideas while coming up with new categories.

It has been discontinued as of this year.

5. Unforgettable Villain Award

Unforgettable Villain is an oddly specific award to have. By default, a good actor or actress will be unforgettable thanks to their performance. Then there’s the term “villain”, which means acts of evil are involved. The problem is that not all shows have villains.

They may have antagonists, characters who oppose the protagonist. But the antagonists might not, themselves, be villains. They may just want different things from the protagonist.

This award only appeared in 2010, which makes us wonder if there were many shows with terrible villains in them. Were they really unforgettable? Do you even remember who those villains were?

6. Asian Skin Solutions Most Radiant Skin Award

If you look up “radiant”, it means glowing and sending out rays of light. It’s understandable when we describe a person’s skin as radiant, since we usually mean that it’s so healthy that it looks like it’s glowing. But to actually have an entire award structured around radiant skin?

How is this even measured? Does someone take a luminance meter (a device for measuring brightness, usually used for light bulbs) to every nominees’ face? If a person’s face is really giving off light, doesn’t it mean that person is… radioactive? We would be very afraid if someone’s face was giving off light.

Luckily, this award stopped after 2016.

7. Bioskin Healthiest Hair Award

Take a look at the five nominees for this year’s Bioskin Healthiest Hari Award. Three of them obviously have dyed hair.

Any hair stylist worth their salt will tell you that dyeing your hair is not good for the scalp, especially when there’s bleaching involved. I’m betting Ian Fang (extreme left) had to bleach his hair a few times to get that light colour.

So why would the nominees have coloured hair? It already signals that some damage has been done to the hair, so, they wouldn’t have the healthiest hair, would they?

The Star Awards airs this Sunday, 16 April, on Channel 8 and Toggle.

This review was written for and first published on Yahoo Singapore.

Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter, having written for Police & Thief, Incredible Tales, Crimewatch, and Point of Entry. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. You can find him on social media as Optimarcus and on his site.

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